"That means they are men who were taken by women," said Ute. "See," she
said, pointing up to the hills and forests north of Laura. "Those are
the great forests. No one knows how far they extend to the east, and
they go north as far as Torvaldsland. In them there are the forest
people, but also many bands of outlaws, some of women and some of men."
"Women?" I asked.
"Some call them the forest girls," said Ute. "Others call them the
panther girls, for they dress themselves in the teeth and skins of
forest panthers, which they slay with their spears and bows."
I looked at her.
"They live in the forest without men," she said, "saving those they
enslave, and then sell, when tiring of them. They shave the heads of
their male slaves in that fashion to humiliate them. And that, too, is
the way they sell them, that all the world may know that they fell slave
to females, who then sold them."